Are screens innately bad for children? How much is too much? Is there anything good about children gaming? How do you stop it? Should you? We ask the experts.

Amother of two young children recently confided that she had come to realise “my main task as a parent is controlling the kids’ screen time”. She sighed. “It’s a bigger job than feeding them.”

Fortnite. Minecraft. Peppa Pig. How many bottom lips have bulged, tears been shed and tantrums chucked in clashes over time spent consuming entertainment such as this on digital devices?

Smartphones, tablets and computers shine their sleep-disrupting lights on all sorts of tensions in families today. Meanwhile, parents contend with an endless stream of guilt-inducing headlines – and the odd cafe owner – giving them the bad news on children and digital devices.

“The concept of digital abstinence, the idea that you pack it away and get rid of it, is in fact no longer really relevant or useful for families,” says paediatrician Dr Anthea Rhodes, director of the National Child Health Poll at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. “Almost everyone is online and that includes most teenagers and a lot of much younger children – it’s an aspect of how most people live now.”

The stats bear her out. Almost all secondary school children have their own tablet or mobile phone. So do two-thirds of primary school-aged children and a third of preschoolers, according to the hospital’s National Child Health poll. No wonder excessive screen time topped a list of parents’ concerns in an earlier poll by the hospital.

And it’s no wonder some parents have a tricky time navigating this area. As Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg mused, it’s rare in human history for parents to be grappling with the very issues they are trying to help their children manage.

“It’s almost like the blind trying to lead the blind, in a weird way, trying to see the light,” he says.

So are screens innately bad for children? How much is too much? Is there anything good about children gaming? How do you stop it? Should you?

Here’s what the experts say.

“Fortnite is a genius game,” says child and adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, “in that it combines the strategising, the building and the shooting, which are three things that people love to do online.

“Add to that it was free and that it was able to be played on multiple devices and that it has no save points – [and] it actually turned out to be a really, really dangerous thing.

“Number one, it’s not appropriate for children in primary school yet a lot of primary school kids are permitted to play it.”

Fortnite is rated for children 12 or older. (Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram all stipulate that you must be over 13 to join.)

“Second, it has no save points so that when Mum’s asking you to set the table or do your homework, in order for you to walk away you’d have to abandon your friends – and that’s just never going to happen.

I think it really does sow the seeds of some fairly compulsive play.

“The games go for 20 minutes each and so once you’ve started you can’t really stop. So I think it really does sow the seeds of some fairly compulsive play, and I think that can impact on other aspects of their lives – their academic life, their social life and, of course, their family life.”

Yes, the very mention of Fortnite has been eliciting eye rolls in parents and teachers since it was released in 2017 – and rapt enthusiasm among its 200 million registered users.

That its makers have just announced a $140 million prize pool for weekly tournaments won’t hurt the game’s uptake either. Perhaps new rival game Apex Legends will make a dent – it attracted 25 million players in its first week.

But Dr Marcus Carter, from the University of Sydney, views Fortnite through a different prism. Dr Carter, who lectures in digital cultures, has studied the online play of children aged nine to 12.Advertisement

What I like about the complexity of games like Fortnite and Minecraft is that kids really can dive in and develop a deep knowledge.

“What I like about the complexity of games like Fortnite and Minecraft is that kids really can dive in and develop a deep knowledge,” he says. (An educational version of Minecraft is used in many Australian schools.) “These kids are building a curriculum for themselves in problem-solving, which is a more broadly applicable skill.”

Try playing Fortnite with your children, he adds, and “you’ll probably suck”. (This writer can attest to that.) “How many things are there when the kids are better than the parent?”

Dr Carter notes that when Fortnite team members chat during the game, it can be about a range of topics and not just the game itself. “That’s what hanging out with your friends is about,” he says. For children who may struggle socially in school “being an expert in Minecraft is empowering and confidence building”.

Context may well be key. Dr Carr-Gregg says that while some parents regard Minecraft as the “the crack cocaine of the internet”, he has used it therapeutically with a boy who “could express himself through Minecraft much better than anything else”.

And passions wane, as Dr Carter points out. “Fortnite will probably drop off and be replaced by the next thing.” One 13-year-old former Fortnite fan we spoke with concurred. “I’m bored with it. For me it’s dead, and probably for my friends.”Advertisement

As University of Melbourne social researcher Jane Mavoa notes, screen time in itself is not a “monolithic construct” from which you can infer certain outcomes. “The reality is there’s a huge difference between a kid playing [online] with their dad for a bit of one-on-one time, just having fun building and creating, versus, say, watching a TV show.”

Rather than being a gateway to moral ruin, digital activities can nourish children’s play in complex ways, as Ms Mavoa has found in her PhD study of six- to eight-year-olds. Children will play together, adopt characters, invent scenarios and build obstacle courses to navigate within the world of Minecraft; in a playground, they might act out a Minecraft scenario using gumnuts as stand-ins for blocks. “Kids don’t reproduce verbatim what they’ve watched. They take these elements and reshape them and mix them up.”

A passion for Minecraft can propel children who otherwise wouldn’t read into consuming books on the game. They might even get stuck into Minecraft crafting. Parents can facilitate creative crossovers, too. One father we spoke with noticed his two sons viewing Japanese animations online and reading a high turnover of manga comics. The father went online himself and found a Japanese manga artist in Melbourne. She now tutors the boys once a week in (screen-free) drawing techniques and conversational Japanese. “They’re usually very rowdy but during the lessons you can hear a pin drop,” the father says.

But what to do when your child just won’t switch off?

A UK television host last year confessed she smashed her two boys’ tablets on a table leg after they defied her and kept playing Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). “We’d made all sorts of rules and all sorts of times – and all of those rules got broken. And, in the end, I said, ‘Right, that’s it!’”

Most parents who’ve had to prise a tablet from a wailing child’s grip, or endure aggressive backchat from an otherwise polite adolescent who has been asked to switch off, will have strategies of their own. They might range from pre-emptive boundaries about when it’s OK to log on – weekends, once homework is done – to putting in place parental controls on what apps can be used and for how long. Then there are other tactics such as limiting video-game chat to friendship groups (and not strangers); or disallowing in-app purchases on family devices (the company behind Fortnite made $3 billion last year, including in-game “micro-transactions” – alarm bells ringing?).

UNICEF’s 2017 Children in a Digital World report cautions parents not to assume that any digital activity is prima facie wrong, and notes that “tension around these restrictions can also damage trust between parents and children”.

I plead with parents on a weekly basis that for every hour of screen time there be at least two hours of green time.

Dr Carr-Gregg, who headed the recent review that led to smartphones being banned in NSW primary schools, has this to say: “Young people aren’t very good at self-regulation and I think one of the things we need to do as parents is remember that we are their frontal cortex. We need to be the fully developed part of their brain that isn’t. We need to set limits and boundaries.

“I plead with parents on a weekly basis that for every hour of screen time there be at least two hours of green time.

“Kids need to be outdoors, they need to oxygenate their brain, they need to exercise. And staring at screens for 13 hours a day is not OK.”

(Thirteen hours a day may well amount to a gaming disorder, which the World Health Organisation has controversially added to its list of diseases.)

If I was in the middle of coffee with friends and someone tipped it out while I was halfway through and said, ‘Now go and set the table’, well, I would probably get pretty agitated.

Professor Susan Edwards, who recently co-wrote a statement of guidance on digital technology for Early Childhood Australia, tries to work with children towards “a happy medium” and says a bit of empathy can go a long way.

“If I was in the middle of having a coffee with my friends and someone came and tipped it out while I was halfway through it and said, ‘Now go and set the table’, well, I would probably get pretty agitated.

“So before they even start, it’s like, ‘OK, you’re going to have 10 minutes of this, or ‘When that episode of Peppa Pig is finished, Mummy’s putting the phone away.’ ”

One mother we spoke with bemoaned the loss of good old-fashioned boredom for children in modern life. Rather than having to entertain themselves, they simply reached for the nearest smartphone.

So when Pasi Sahlberg, who is professor of educational policy and deputy director at the UNSW’s Gonski Institute, says parents and educators need to think much harder about how to entice children away from digital devices, he also concedes that this can be very hard work.

“We’re dealing with an extremely powerful opponent,” he says, “so very few of the conventional, traditional means will be enough.”

Professor Sahlberg, who moved with his young family from Finland to Sydney last year, devises “winning proposals” to get his two boys outdoors and engaged. “Both our boys are extremely interested in Australian birds. I just need to say, ‘Do you want to take the bicycles and go and see cockatoos?’ and they throw everything else away and, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ ”

He points out that Australian kids copped a D-minus overall in the latest Active Healthy Kids Australia report card, which crunches data from around Australia. One in five Australian children and teens get the recommended 60 minutes of “huff and puff” exercise every day. This, on its own, is a good reason to get kids up and active, he says.

“The older I get, the stronger believer I am in the power of high-quality play for children,” says Professor Sahlberg. “Playgrounds are undervalued places for the little kids nowadays. Australia has beautiful playgrounds. Go there for an hour. But go there without your iPhone.”

So how much is too much?

It’s probably fair to say, as the co-founder of the $35-billion Australian software company Atlassian, Mike Cannon-Brookes, did last week, “If you entertain your kid 24 hours a day with an iPad, they are probably not going to turn out so great.”

Even experts who take the most nuanced views of how kids use screens would agree there has to be an upper limit, according to Professor Anthony Okely, who led the team that developed Australia’s screen-time guidelines. He says some parents believe that four or five hours of screen time per day for a four-year-old is perfectly fine.

The guidelines he developed are part of broader advice focused on limiting sedentary activities and encouraging children’s movement – and they’re based mostly on evidence about passive screen-based activities such as television viewing rather than, say, playing on a Wii. Professor Okely says he has taken a cautious approach – in the absence of sufficient evidence that new technologies cause no harm and, in fact, do good.

So in Australia, it’s recommended that children younger than two have no daily screen time; two to five-year-olds have no more than an hour; and five to 17-year-olds have no more than two hours of recreational screen time. (Four in five Australian children and teens exceed these recommended limits daily, according to the latest Active Healthy Kids Australia report.)

“Where it gets a bit grey is where we have more interactive screen-based technologies,” says Professor Okely, who is director of research at Early Start at the University of Wollongong. “Then the key question becomes: are the relationships with health the same as with passive technologies, or are they different? That’s where the point of contention is.”

The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) has similar guidelines to Australia with some distinctions: it says video chatting is OK for children under 18 months, for example, because “back-and-forth conversation” improves language skills “much more than one-way interaction with a screen”. (In its tips for parents, the AAP also notes that it’s OK for teens to be online – “online relationships are part of typical adolescent development” – but they need to understand the importance of privacy and the dangers of predators.)

Professor Okely is disappointed that the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health does not offer screen-time limits because the evidence of harm from screens is “too weak” and “often overstated”. Instead, the College suggests families ask four questions:

Is screen time in your household controlled?

Does screen use interfere with what your family want to do?

Does screen use interfere with sleep?

Are you able to control snacking during screen time?

If parents can answer “in a way that satisfies them”, says the College, then they are doing well managing “a tricky issue”.

One thing that’s not contested – phew – is that the light from screens can prevent sleep onset in children and adults. Almost half of Australian children use a screen at bedtime, the Royal Children’s Hospital poll found in 2017. Infant TV viewing has been linked to shorter sleep duration (which has been linked to weight gain). Even the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics prescribed a limit for this: switch off screens an hour before bedtime.

You’ve got a choice about how you think about tech. You’re not powerless against it.

Other things are not in dispute either. For very young children to develop visual depth perception, for example, they need to look at real three-dimensional objects and not just those on a two-dimensional screen. To develop fine motor skills, they need to manipulate three-dimensional objects through a range of activities (drawing, painting, modelling with clay) rather than just swiping and pinching at tablets.

Details such as this, along with the science on screens’ effects on eyesight and posture, are set out in Early Childhood Australia’s recent statement of guidance on digital technology. With a focus on lived experience, it acknowledges that screens can be useful as a handy distraction to help calm young children – say, in a waiting room – but they shouldn’t, for example, be used to distract children from their own feelings.

But the biggest takeout for parents, says co-author Professor Edwards – a former kindergarten teacher and now professor in early childhood education at the Australian Catholic University – is that there is more than one way to view technology and its place in your family’s life.

“You’ve got a choice about how you think about tech,” she says. “You’re not powerless against it.”

She suggests asking what you value as a family and then assessing how your family’s digital use supports that, or doesn’t. For example, playing games such as Minecraft can offer a way for children to stay in touch with friends who don’t live nearby.

What would Finland do?

The Nordic paragon of child education is also the home of phone pioneer Nokia – and it’s as divided as anywhere on whether to double down on technology or steer kids away from it, says Professor Sahlberg, a former director-general of Finland’s Ministry of Education.

He believes it’s critical for children to learn to self-regulate and that it’s non-digital activities that help fortify them against the infinite allure of the online world. Professor Sahlberg suggests parents make it a habit for kids to regularly choose and read paper books; and to handwrite letters once a week to, say, a grandparent. “Writing letters by hand is a great way to help young children concentrate.” And learning how to have respectful, face-to-face conversations takes practice.

If we know anything from the social research about what helps people during the course of their lives it is self-control.

“I think these are all habits that are at the heart of human existence and that help you to develop your self-control, calming down and thinking about what you can do.

“If we know anything from the social research about what helps people during the course of their lives it is self-control.”

(Conscientiousness, self-discipline and perseverance in children under 10 have been found to be the key indicators of health, wealth and non-criminality in adulthood, in a New Zealand study that has followed the lives of 1037 babies born in 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin. )

Professor Sahlberg, who started out teaching maths and science, believes that using digital devices can undermine children’s ability to self-regulate – “to sit down and think”.

“If you don’t know how to calm down and concentrate and focus, it’s actually a recipe for failure in maths and science.

“If you need my expert opinion on why NAPLAN results in Australia haven’t improved and why PISA results [the OECD’s international education tests] are declining in Finland, a big part of the reason is that kids don’t have this kind of patience any more to sit down and think about a problem.”

Put away your own device. Just be an example for your children. It’s gonna be hard for a parent. Put it away. Shut it down.

(The links between fine motor skills – which children develop by doing a range of activities with their hands and fingers – and later academic success, including in maths and reading, are still being unpacked by scientists.)

So what does Professor Sahlberg say to fretful parents who want to limit their children’s use?

“Look at yourself first. Put away your own device. Just be an example for your children. It’s gonna be hard for a parent. Put it away. Shut it down.”

Children don’t just model behaviour on parents and older siblings but on family attitudes to aspects of life such as technology. Professor Sahlberg says digital devices should be understood by children to be tools “to live a healthier and safer life and do good things” – and not a treat.

“Young kids think these hand-held devices are entertainment, a treat – ‘If I’m nice, I’m going to get Daddy’s iPhone’. That’s something I find problematic because it creates behaviour and thinking that may end up being difficult.”

To keep some kind of balance for children, Professor Sahlberg is convinced that “play and spending more time with your children is the key”.

“If we can do this in Finland – go and play with our kids and use the cold and frozen nature to do that – you should be able to do that many times better in Australia.

“This is a perfect setting for raising children without technology,” he says, “because the beauty is just unbelievable.”

Primary school students across Western Sydney, Australia, have been given the chance to share their vision for Western Sydney Airport through an innovative design competition coordinated by the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education, the video game Minecraft and Liverpool City Council.

Students will be asked to tackle some of the real-world challenges involved in creating a greenfield airport and will create their answers using the popular electronic building blocks from the video game Minecraft.

Now in its second year, the design competition has a new ‘gold sponsor’ with Western Sydney Airport coming on board to provide a portion of the prize money.

Combined with sponsorship from Liverpool City Council, students will be competing for prizes worth A$40,000 (US$29,000), which can be spent on science and technology projects at their school.

“We are delighted to support such an exciting learning opportunity for the students of Western Sydney,” said Graham Millett, CEO, Western Sydney Airport.

“These primary school students will be finishing school the year the airport opens. It’s exciting to think that many may one day be working at the airport. We can’t wait to see what their imaginative young minds will dream up for Western Sydney Airport.”

The NSW Department of Education and Minecraft will run free professional learning days for teachers at Campbelltown, Liverpool, Penrith and Parramatta. These sessions will be hosted at the city campuses of Western Sydney University (WSU), which is a supporter of the competition.

Students will submit their entries online with the top schools invited to present their ideas to a judging panel of industry experts in August 2019.

“We are so proud of the success of the Minecraft Design competition,” said Liverpool Mayor Wendy Waller. “We launched it last year at a local level because we saw the importance of connecting the students of today with the opportunities the new airport would create. We had hundreds of students from 12 schools involved and our competition was highlighted on Minecraft’s global education site.

“This year, with the great support of WSA, WSU, NSW Department of Education and Minecraft, we have been able to expand the competition for students across Western Sydney. I am sure thousands of students will relish the opportunity to be involved.”

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — With no school and limited responsibilities in the summer, kids often find a hard time finding something to do. Parents who want their children to spend their free time constructively might consider sending them to one of Northeastern State University’s Summer Youth Academies or Summer Day Camps.

“This isn’t a baby-sitting service,” said Jerreth McLaughlin of College of Extending Learning. “This is something that’s really cutting-edge and exciting for these kids.”

Both the NSU Day Camps and Youth Academies will be held in June, and registration is now open. Parents won’t want to wait long to sign up, though, because all the spots can fill up quickly. McLaughlin said the programs typically have between 300 and 400 participants.

The Summer Youth Academies are each one week long, offering a variety of camps for different ages. The first week – June 3-7 – has an Up, Up and Away camp for 4- and 5-year-olds, a Minecraft camp for 6- to 8-year-olds, The Magic of Coding camp for 6- to 8-year-olds, and The Art of Photography camp for 9-year-olds and up.

“Minecraft is always very popular,” said McLaughlin. “The Minecraft camps usually sell out quick and go right up to the maximum number. I would say it probably gives them a leg up on school, thinking, and keeping their analytic skills sharp during the summer.”

The second week of Summer Youth Academies – June 10-14 – features a camp for 6- to 8-year-olds called Imagination Station. Kids will get to play with Legos, building blocks, Lincoln Logs and more, but the camp involves more than just playing with toys.

“We’ve got master teachers involved with this,” said McLaughlin. “So it’s not like a kid’s at home, sitting there playing with Legos. No, they give them different ideas and different creative approaches. They give them idea starters for designing and engineering.”

Several of the Summer Youth Academies involve space exploration. Academies include the Comets, Planets, & Space, Oh My, for 4- to 5-year-olds; Space: NASA, for 9-year-olds and up; Space, the Final Frontier, for 6- to 8-year-olds; and Exploration Space, for 6- to 8-year-olds.

“Last year, Barbara Fuller got to visit NASA and got a bunch of stuff from them,” said McLaughlin. “So they’re basing their camps off of material she got from NASA. I think it’s going to be state-of-the-art and cutting edge.”

Instead of paying for a whole week of Summer Youth Academies, parents might want to send their kids to NSU for only a day or two.

Last year, NSU held a pilot program for its Summer Day Camps program at the Tahlequah campus only.

It was so popular that it has expanded to the Broken Arrow campus.

Each day of the week throughout June is dedicated to a different camp. Monday is for Jewelry Creation, where kids can make their own treasures; Tuesday for Live in Your Own Virtual Reality, offering students a chance to use a green screen and make their own movies; Wednesday for Roller Coasters and Amusement Parks, giving campers a chance to build their own amusement park; Thursday for The Art Studio, a student can learn about textures and create projects; and Fridays, for The Science of Science, where kids will conduct experiments.

Both the Summer Youth Academies and Day Camps give kids a chance to explore new subjects and find new hobbies.

“Children sometimes don’t even know what they like,” said McLaughlin. “This is an opportunity to try something, and after a week if they don’t like it, they don’t have to try it again. They may decide this is really cool, or they at least have an idea of what it is and what it does.”

Get involved

For more information about the NSU Summer Youth Academies or Day Camps, contact Continuing Education at 918-444-4610, or visit www.nsuok.edu.

Marvel Studios is hard at work on Black Widow, finally giving actress Scarlett Johansson her first solo movie in the MCU. And now we might know who she’ll be going up against.

According to a report from That Hashtag Show, Moonlight star Andre Holland is in the running to play the villain for Black Widow. The actor earned critical acclaim for his role in Moonlight, as well his starring role in Hulu’s Castle Rock.

“Marvel [was previously] seeking a male with open ethnicity in his 40s to portray the film’s villain, who is described only as ‘exciting.’ The studio is now looking for either a Black British or African actor, 30-45, to portray a ‘tough, dangerous and mysterious’ villain,” stated the report.

There’s no word yet on who the character could be, though some have theorized it could be another character with red in their ledger such as Taskmaster or Red Guardian.

“Yes. Correct… It never was going to be,” said Feige. “Somebody writes, ‘I hear it’s R-rated!’ And then everybody writes it up.”

There have been rumors over the more mature label being slapped on Black Widow ever since news broke of Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, and chairman Bob Iger confirmed the R-rated Deadpool movies would continue. But it seems like Black Widow, despite her past as an assassin, will still be the typical PG-13 fare Marvel Studios is known for.

What are the best Minecraft mods? It’s a question that’s been asked for generations – since a young Plato attempted to tweak his game at the knee of Socrates. Or something. As new Minecraft mods have been steadily flowing out since the game’s first public release, there are a whole heap to choose from.

Minecraft is a blocky phenomenon. It’s the only game to ever exist that allows you to construct a castle the height of Jack’s famous beanstalk and fall through an increasingly challenging abyss for an eternity – but it could do with some Minecraft mods to improve things. From interface changes to tools to aid your hours of exploration, you have the option to make Mojang’s classic even better on PC.

The following list compiles some of the best Minecraft mods out there right now. All are divided into sections, depending on what you want to do with the game – from simple changes to deep, intricate Minecraft mods you can get lost in for months.

HOW DO I INSTALL MINECRAFT MODS?

Every Minecraft mod on this list comes with its own installation instructions that you should follow closely, and you’ll likely also need to downgrade your Minecraft version for many of them – in most cases, version 1.7.10 works best. To help with that, you can try MultiMC– a useful bit of software that lets you manage multiple Minecraft mod installs.

Alternatively, if faffing around in obscure folders isn’t your cup of tea, then grab a modpack instead – which comes with everything preinstalled and preconfigured. We recommend either Feed The Beast’s Direwolf20 1.7.10 pack (which comes with a YouTube series that’ll teach you how to use many of the included mods), the Tekkit Pack, or making your own modpack with Curse Voice. If you have trouble with any of them Google is probably a good bet.

Shall we dig into our list of the best Minecraft mods?

MINECRAFT INTERFACE MODS

When you’ve got lots of Minecraft mods installed you’ll probably find that Minecraft’s default UI doesn’t cut it any longer. The following downloads make playing modded Minecraft a more pleasant experience.

OPTIFINE / FASTCRAFT

Got a beefy computer? Make Minecraft look incredible with Optifine, which adds support for HD textures and more control over graphical options. Alternatively, if you’re playing on a potato, grab Fastcraft– it significantly improves performance on lower-end machines, particularly with lots of Minecraft mods installed.

JOURNEYMAP

Everyone likes to know where they’re going. Journeymap maps your world as you explore, lets you mark waypoints of interest, and can even warn you when mobs are sneaking up behind you. View the resulting map in-game as a minimap, or in fullscreen, or even in an external web browser.

NOT ENOUGH ITEMS

If you need an antidote to the pain of alt-tabbing to a wiki while playing Minecraft then turn to Not Enough Items (or NEI). It lets you look up the recipe for any item from any installed Minecraft mod through a nifty interface on Minecraft’s inventory screen.

WAILA

WAILA stands for “What Am I Looking At,” and it’s a godsend when you’ve got loads of mods installed. Simply point your crosshair at a block, and it’ll tell you what it is, and which mod it comes from. With newer mods, it can also tell you about the state of that block – how full a tank of water is, for example, or the charge level on a battery. You’ll need NEI to run it.

INVENTORY TWEAKS

Install Inventory Tweaks and you’ll soon wonder how you lived without it. Tools that run out of durability are automatically replaced in your hotbar, stacks of blocks are automatically refilled, and a simple middle-click will sort your chests and inventory. It’s also endlessly customisable.

MINECRAFT CREATIVE MODS

For many people, crafting awe-inspiring structures is what Minecraft is all about. The following mods will dramatically expand your creative options, from new types of wood to proper furniture.

CHISEL 2

Minecraft only has one cobblestone texture. Chisel 2 has 24. In fact, it adds alternative textures to a huge number of the game’s default blocks as well as blocks that come with other mods in this list – letting you create any decor you desire in your in-game constructions.

CARPENTER’S BLOCKS

Cubes are great and all, but occasionally you want a slope, right?Carpenter’s Blocks delivers those slopes, alongside beds, buttons, doors, flowerpots, torches, and more, all of which can be customised with the texture of any other block. Ever wanted a netherrack ladder? This is the mod that’ll do it.

DECOCRAFT

If you’d like a bit more variety when it comes to decorating your world, Decocraft is the mod for you. It adds craftable chairs, tables, bowls, bottles, lamps, stuffed toys, beer kegs, and even a kitchen sink. The full list is almost endless, so dive in to the Wiki to see the full range of options.

BIBLIOCRAFT

Bibliocraft also offers a bunch of aesthetically-pleasing blocks, but these ones come with their own functionality. Display cases and shelves let you show off your trophies, while a printing press lets you copy in-game books. It even adds a monocle for the distinguished gentlemen amongst you.

PIG MANURE

If Minecraft can be accused of lacking one thing, it’s poo. This humble Minecraft mod solves that problem with aplomb, not just making it so your pigs drop a steaming pile of the proverbial every now and again, but instead providing you with a new resource to master in Minecraft. Collect the droppings and you can use them instead of bone meal to fertilize your crops. Alternatively, you can fire them in a furnace and produce bricks that you can use to build a house – just don’t use them with white wool.

BACTERIA MOD

Bacteria simply never goes out of fashion, so it’s about time Mincraft modders brought it into the creative sandbox. This mod lets you cultivate a range of different bacterias, each of which will perform different tasks – destructive or creative – and set them loose on the world. Just be sure to contain it properly, especially if you’re experimenting in your own base.

PAM’S HARVESTCRAFT

Bring some serious variation to your Minecraft diet with this produce-laden mod that adds over 1,100 new foods and items, including 60 crops, 17 types of fish, tofu for vegetarian and vegan dishes, and 36 fruit or item bearing trees. The end result is a Minecraft diet that’s equal parts lavish and balanced. If you want to make this a necessity rather than just a fun extension to vanilla Minecraft, use it alongside Hunger Overhaul and The Spice of Life, which both punish your poor eating habits.

MINECRAFT EXPLORATION MODS

Some people prefer the life of a nomad to that of a builder. The following mods either spice up world generation, add new worlds to explore, or give you the tools you’ll need to explore them. To the Far Lands, and beyond!

BIOMES O’PLENTY

Let’s start with the Overworld. Biomes O’Plenty adds a ridiculous 80 new biomes and 12 sub-biomes to Minecraft – from Alps to Wasteland. It also adds a little more variety to tools, armour, food, colour, and adds a few extra blocks to build with.

LOTSOMOBS

Working in much the same way as Biomes O Plenty, LotsOMobs adds a staggering 25 new mobs to further enrich your Minecraft world and make your biomes that bit more realistic. Gone are the days when squid were the only creature in the sea and chickens roamed free across the savannah. If you’d like giraffes, narwhal, seagulls, elephants, and even dinosaurs to appear in your game, then this is the mod for you.

CANDYCRAFT

Here’s a great exploration mod for people who avoid the Nether on the grounds of it being just a bit too demonic and hellscapey. CandyCraftoffers sweet-toothed Minecrafters a new realm to explore that’s made entirely of candy. There are sugar-coated critters to kill, marshmallow tools to equip, and honeycomb armour to wear as you make your way through this sickly sweet realm. Eat your heart out, Hansel and Gretel.

GALACTICRAFT

Boldly go where no Steve has been before with Galacticraft, an expansive mod that let’s you travel to, explore, and even colonise an entire solar system. Aside from all the interplanetary sightseeing, the main draw of this mod is the sheer amount of effort you’ll have to put into it in order to escape Earth and its famously surly bonds. It’s a compelling and brilliantly constructed series of missions that rewards you with gameplay opportunities, like building a moonbase, pimping out your spaceship, and fighting evolved mobs on Mars.

QUIVERBOW

Not nearly enough mods focus on improving that most ancient and beloved of weapons – the bow and arrow. Quiverbow overhauls the options available to budding archers by providing them with a bounty of projectile-based weaponry. From basic additions like the humble crossbow to snow cannons and firework launchers, this is the ultimate mod for any aspiring Minecraft sniper.

MINECRAFT AUTOMATION MODS

There’s nothing like a good factory setup in your Minecraft base – automatically mining and producing resources so you never run out. The following mods offer everything you need to fully automate almost every aspect of modded Minecraft, and work best in conjunction with some of the deeper mods in the final section.

ROPE BRIDGE MOD

Chasms are a constant inconvenience for Minecraft explorers: you spend minutes jumping up the highest mountain only to find an annoying series of gaps between its peaks. Make mountaineering easier for yourself by installing this handy mod, which provides you with a portable grappling gun that will automatically build a bridge from where you’re standing to where it’s aimed. It’s also particularly useful for building tree-top fortresses.

CATERPILLAR

Digging is the bread and butter of Minecraft, which is why someone made this automated tunnelling machine, freeing you of the chore so you can explore, kill mobs, and meticulously redecorate your base. You’ll have to build it yourself, but once you do, you’ll be saving hours in virtual labour. The drill head is upgradable too, with different materials offering their own benefits, so there’s some scope for you to get really stuck into this miner’s delight.

PROGRESSIVE AUTOMATION

This mod adds basic automated devices for everything from farming to forestry. The best bit about Progressive Automation is that each machine can be upgraded as you progress, meaning fewer enormous rebuilds further down the line.

APPLIED ENERGISTICS 2

After staying a while in a large base storage starts to become an issue. Applied Energistics 2 lets you turn matter into energy, storing items on hard drives that can be accessed wirelessly from anywhere in your base. It’s fantastically useful, especially for the hoarders amongst you.

BIG REACTORS

Ever wanted to be a nuclear engineer without learning about physics and going through multiple years of higher education? Then Big Reactors is the mod for you. Big Reactors allows you to build massive, fully configurable reactors in order to cope with the power demands of all those other industrial mods you’ve been tinkering with. Better still, it’s designed to interface with ComputerCraft, meaning you can monitor, regulate, and program your power station from a safe distance – should you tinker too much and cause a meltdown that is.

COMPUTERCRAFT AND RFTOOLS

Finally, we’d be remiss not to mention ComputerCraft. Itadds fully-programmable computers and assorted peripherals into the Minecraft world. It also adds RFTools, which lets you monitor and maintain a complex power network. Both are vital tools for any kind of automated base.

MINECRAFT EXPANSIVE MODS

That just leaves the largest mods – the ones that reward a significant time investment with substantial changes to vanilla Minecraft. We’d recommend tackling just one or two of these at a time, even if they’re bundled together in a modpack, for your sanity more than anything else. By the time you reach their endgame you’ll be the master of all you survey.

DRACONIC EVOLUTION

If you’ve managed to clad yourself in diamond and long for some new endgame gear to show off to your friends then you might want to install the Draconic Evolution mod. As well as adding heaps of new high-tier weaponry and armour, Draconic Evolution also has its own energy system that’s essentially Minecraft’s answer to cold fusion. Other features include a weather manipulation system, an enormous chest with built-in crafting facilities, teleporters, and mob spawners. In short, it’s the ideal mod for anyone who’s mastered vanilla Survival mode.

THAUMCRAFT

Being a wizard is pretty awesome, and that’s no different in the world of Minecraft. Thaumcraft lets you manipulate the magic energies found in every in-game item to create powerful wands, golems to do your bidding, and essence-infused items and tools. It hooks beautifully into several other mods.

SIMPLY JETPACKS

Jetpacks make everything better. Everything. That’s why this humble mod isn’t looking to burden you with countless new systems and recipes to remember, it’s just trying to give ordinary Minecrafters the gift of instantaneous flight. Soar into the skies powered by Redstone Flux, letting you avoid hazards and move around the map much quicker. Higher level jetpacks will also act as armour and even negate fall damage, so there’s plenty of reason to invest a little time into this nifty add-on.

BLOOD MAGIC

Occasionally, Minecraft is all a little too cute and fluffy. That’s where modders come in, introducing some ritualistic dark arts to give the vanilla game some edge. Blood Magic– that most heinous of all magics – introduces a few new systems and mechanics based around drawing power from the blood of mobs. Once you’ve harvested enough life essence you can use it at a Blood Altar in order to craft new items like a Dagger of Sacrifice.

MINEFACTORY RELOADED

Arguably the best all-round technology mod is Minefactory Reloaded. It adds heaps of machines and devices that allow you to automate almost everything – from breeding cows to playing in-game records. As an added bonus, it also works particularly well with many of the mods in the previous section.

BUILDCRAFT

Mining by hand is a thing of the past and everyone knows it. That’s why there’s BuildCraft, a hugely expansive mod that essentially allows you to put vanilla Minecraft through its own industrial revolution. From automated quarries to autocrafting tables that will pump out any desired item with the right ingredients on tap, this mod let’s you go full scale with your production lines.

HATS

From the ridiculous to the sublime, this cosmetic mod adds over 100 hats to Minecraft, ensuring you’ve always got some way of surprising and, in some cases, shocking your friends. You’ll have to spend some time hunting the hats down, though, as they’re programmed to randomly spawn on mobs around the world – expect to see a squid with a phone booth on its head or a creeper sporting a sombrero.

PNEUMATICCRAFT

PneumaticCraft swaps out power for pressurized air making for a mod that’s both highly volatile and incredibly rewarding. Whether it’s air cannons, programmable drones, or a range of assembly machines, this mod adds a host of mechanical and automated options to Minecraft.

If those are not are the best Minecraft mods, we don’t know what are. These improvements and tweaks will transform your blocky bundle of joy and keep you playing even longer, much like the Minecraft maps that will transport you absolutely anywhere and the Minecraft servers that further keep things fresh. For now, though, we’re ready to get lost in Minecraft all over again.

Reddit user DovahhhSama recently shared a screenshot, which shows off a recreation of Thanos in the world of Minecraft. As a comment attached to the photo jokes, they spent two hours on the recreation only to get a small number of upvotes (something that has changed since the post went viral).

Thanos will return (in a much less blocky form) in next month’s Avengers: Endgame, where the ramifications of his “snap” will be further explored. Now that Thanos has turned half the universe into dust, the remaining heroes will have a lot on their plate when it comes to fighting him.

“They’ve been misused by people who didn’t understand their true power.” co-writer Christopher Markus said in Infinity War‘s art book last year. “And now that the real master of them, Thanos, has shown up we can see what they actually do. The problem is, as you can imagine, as you gain control over these things, your story just goes haywire because why are there ay stakes for the man who can control time, space, reality, your mind, your soul and power? He can reset as many times as it’ll take. So you have to build in a lot of bumps in the road or maybe keep one stone away from him for long enough in order for the thing to have any dramatic structure at all.”

And as it turns out, Thanos’ snap almost occurred much later in the overall storyline than what ended up being onscreen.

“It wasn’t just, well, we’ve got too much story, we’d better chop it in half,” Markus revealed. “But what we realized is, it would feel more like a cliffhanger than we intended. It would be a continuation of exactly what you were watching before. [But it needed to] be as big as it wants to be, and as sprawling… [So we went with a script] that went all the way to a tragic ending. And then one where mysterious things happen that I can’t tell you about.”

What do you think of this Minecraft version of Thanos? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Avengers: Endgame will be released on April 26th. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universemovies include Captain Marvel on March 8th, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.

PewDiePie is known to just about everyone as the biggest name on the internet – and for good reason. The Swedish gamer boasts a following of almost 88 million, giving him the title of the most subscribed channel on YouTube – a spot which he’s held since 2013, years longer than anyone else. With Indian music label T-Series inching ever closer to his crown, the 29-year-old has beaten the odds, and managed to hold onto his position for a whopping six years. But, with friends who will spend eye-watering amounts of money on billboards, and loyal fans who dub themselves ‘soldiers’ willing to go to extremes for him, how did he get there? He’s held YouTube’s top spot for years longer than anyone else managed to (Picture: Jonas Ekstrmer/TT) Pewds – real name Felix Kjellberg – started out on YouTube fresh-faced in 2010, making his first video to show off about something funny he found on Minecraft. Although he was at university at the time, he later dropped out and put all his effort into his YouTube videos, working at a hot dog stand to fund his passion. And, despite already building an audience, it wasn’t until 2011 that the gamer started showing his face in his videos. It was around this time that he first started dating Marzia Bisognin, who also created a YouTube channel. The pair later got engaged in 2018. Already having his high-pitched ‘PewDiePie’ catchphrase down, he seemed a bit baffled as to how to define his videos, titling one ‘Video Commentary / Vlog – Partnership? Livestream?’ Whatever they were, they were working, with Felix’s channel reaching more than a million subscribers by July 2012. From then on, the numbers skyrocketed, with his channel overtaking comedy duo Smosh to become the most subscribed on YouTube just a year later. It’s hard to put your finger on why exactly the gamer’s channel grew so rapidly. It could have been anything from the rapid rise of gaming on YouTube, to the family feel he gave his corner of the internet, referring to his fans as ‘bros’. And by the time he’d taken the top spot, he had developed his own trademarks – the PewDiePie shriek and the ‘brofist’ included – and his channel wasn’t like any other around. His popularity only grew, with him taking the starring spot in YouTube Rewind 2014 – a role that this year was controversially given to Will Smith. By 2016, Felix had taken his spot in cultural history, being named as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, and having a genuine impact on the gaming industry, with sales for titles he played shooting up. He’s not afraid to cross boundaries (Picture: YOUTUBE / DRAMAALERT) However, with the start of 2017 came the beginnings of controversy. After he hit headlines for using anti-Semitic imagery and cracking Nazi jokes, during a live stream in September, Felix dropped a shocking racial slur. ‘I’m disappointed in myself because it seems like I’ve learned nothing from all these past controversies,’ he said after the comments. ‘It’s not that I think I can say or do whatever I want and get away with it, that’s not it at all, I’m just an idiot, but that doesn’t make what I said or how I said it OK,’ Kjellberg continued. ‘It was not OK. I’m really sorry if I offended, hurt or disappointed anyone with all of this. Being in the position I am, I should know better … and I owe it to my audience and myself to do better than this.’ However, he and fans moved on quickly – far too quickly, according to some – and his channel was largely unaffected by the scandal. He later launched his show Meme Review, which recently featured an appearance from Elon Musk, straying away from his gaming roots. Team 10 member Justin Roberts bought the gamer a billboard in Times Square (Picture: Youtube/ Dean Noroozi) Part gaming, part vlogging, and part comedy skits, PewDiePie’s videos are still incredibly difficult to define – but that never held his fans back, with his numbers only increasing towards the 100 million mark. But his biggest success was more recent, when it looked like music label T-Series was set to overtake him as the most subscribed channel on YouTube – and his fans and friends immediately snapped into action. American vlogger MrBeast started off a campaign which led to billboards (even one in Times Square), radio adverts, and fans hacking video games. Felix gained support from the most bizarre of places, including Ukip and Pornhub, with the phrase ‘Sub to PewDiePie’ being well and truly branded into our brains – and making an appearance in this year’s underwhelming YouTube Rewind. The world’s biggest YouTubers, from Alfie Deyes and Logan Paul to JackSepticEye and Markiplier, urged their fans to subscribe to the gamer for fear of a corporation holding YouTube’s top spot for the first time in its history. In the first four months of 2019, the gamer’s channel grew more than it did in the entirety of 2018, with him gaining tens of millions of subscribers. As for now? Currently, he’s edging towards 90 million subscribers, having held the music label at bay since November.

Minecraft is one of those games that is timelessly appreciated by all ages. It has stayed incredibly popular since its creation, and has evolved into a large and diverse community.

As the game has grown, it has branched into a few different versions. Players are primarily familiar with the PC edition, as it was the only one for a long time. However, the console and pocket editions are surprisingly different compared to the PC version of the game. Deciding between these three can be a difficult choice if you’re trying to consolidate which platform you’d prefer to play games on. Here are the main differences between each one.

Which edition of Minecraft is best for you?

The original edition of Minecraft, it often is the first to receive new content. The graphics are more advanced on the PC edition, and there are hundreds of third-party mods that can be used on your servers. Along with these mods, you can get third-party addons for UI changes to really customize your gameplay. The multiplayer is diverse, and you can play with any community members who share their servers and realms online. It also has the easiest controls of any edition.

On the downside, the PC edition is obviously not portable. It also isn’t very friendly to new players. The other editions feature some easily accessed tutorial information, and often allow the player to start with a map. There is also very little support in terms of parental control without using some type of third-party application.

Pocket edition

As the most popular versions of Minecraft, it’s clear that the Pocket edition has some appeal to it. Primarily, people play this version for the obvious convenience of having it on the go. Other than the Nintendo Switch, there are no other editions of Minecraft that are quite this portable. It does provide add-on and mod support, although not quite to the extent of the PC version. There are easy parental control settings, and the multiplayer is just as extensive as the PC edition.

There are, unfortunately, quite a few factors working against the Pocket edition. Third party mods are discouraged by the program, so you can only reasonably use the ones provided by Minecraft. The controls are probably the worst of any edition, and they can be incredibly difficult to adjust to.

Console edition

All of the major console retailers (Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo) have Minecraft adaptations for their main consoles. They also continue to put Minecraft on each console that has come out since its creation (such as the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch). Unfortunately, the console edition is the most limited in terms of functionality. The main benefit of each console is the ability to have local co-op capabilities. While there are some local co-op options for PC and Pocket editions of the game, the console version is much easier to access.In fact, the console version is a pretty great option for new players, since every aspect of the game is easily explained, the controls are intuitive, and it’s easy to play with offline friends.

The local co-op features are really the only thing the console editions have over the other two. All worlds on console editions of the game are finite, unlike the other editions, and there is pretty much no mod supportfor any version. The Switch is the only portable console you can use, and the multiplayer on it is far more limited compared to the other editions (though thankfully the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have some decent multiplayer options). There is just far less customizability and optionswhen it comes to the console edition, and the only real major benefit is how easy it is to use.

Bottom line

Of course, the right edition to use all comes down to preference. We suggest using the PC version if you want to use third-party mods, and want the newest features right away.

The Pocket edition is great for young gamers, who parents wish to monitor their gameplay, and gamers who want to play on the go and don’t mind the touchscreen controls.

Finally, console versions are ideal for local co-op, and those who prefer using a controller. No matter which version you choose, Minecraft is an excellent game and we’re sure you’ll enjoy playing it on any platform.

Looking for innovative ways to bring computational thinking and computer science skills to your STEM classes? MINECRAFT: EDUCATION EDITIONmight be just the teaching tool for you, whether you’re an experienced player or are just learning about Minecraft.

Below are all the resources you’ll need to kickstart a game-based learning adventure in your classroom—no advanced degree in gaming required.

Alita: Battle Angel released in theaters on February 14 to dubious acclaim. No one can deny that the visuals were stunning. The faces of the cyborgs and the action sequences truly make you appreciate what modern special effects are capable of. However, the narrative of the film suffers from a run-time that can in no way encompass the plot of the manga it was based on.

Audiences are left with endless questions, especially about the titular main character of the movie, Alita. Her motivations are barely comprehensible, and her past is one giant enigma. Read on if you want to go over every question about Alita’s past the movie left unanswered.

10 WHO MADE ALITA?

As you can probably guess just from watching the trailer of the film, Alita is a cyborg, a human brain encased within a robot body. Not considering the logistics of how this would work, no hint is given about who is responsible for crafting Alita into the cyborg head we first meet her as in the movie.

In the Battle Angel manga, Alita was revealed to have spent most of her life as a cyborg, reaching such a mechanized lifestyle by the age of three. She was created as part of a plot to overthrow a Martian Princess by a man known as Baron Muster. Perhaps it is for the best that the movie did not delve into the complexities of Alita’s creation.

9 WHO WAS ALITA BEFORE SHE BECAME A CYBORG?

Part of Alita’s charm in the movie comes from the fact that she has no idea how to handle the new world she finds herself thrust in. She has no memories of her past life. As such, there are quite a few hilarious fish-out-of-water moments for Alita as she figures out how things work.

However, she never truly learns who she used to be before she woke up in Dr. Ido’s clinic. In the manga, we find out that Alita used to be a person called Yoko. The movie positively refuses to give us these kinds of clues about Alita’s past and keeps things vague for the most part.

8 WHO WAS THE FEMALE CYBORG IN ALITA’S FLASHBACKS?

Alita would receive brief glimpses of her former life in the middle of battles. These flashbacks were actually quite spectacular, depicting epic fights in zero-g. One female cyborg played by Michelle Rodriguez features prominently in these flashbacks.

It appears as if this female cyborg was responsible for Alita’s warrior training. Her name is never spoken, her relationship to Alita is never outright stated, and her appearance in the movie feels nonsensical as a result. In the manga, we learn that she is called Gelda, and she took Alita in when she was young, training her in the ways of Panzer Kunst.

7 WHY DID ALITA ATTACK ZALEM?

In one of Alita’s flashbacks, we see her and a platoon of fellow cyborgs attempting to climb up to Zalem, the infamous city in the sky. Battle cries are heard. One of those cries calls for the end of Zalem.

Given that Zalem is still standing (i.e. floating) hundreds of years later when Alita is discovered in the scrap heap beneath it, we can all assume that Alita and her compatriots failed in their objective. However, we never find out why they were attacking that particular city in the first place. The Terraforming Wars between Mars and Earth are gone into greater detail in the manga.

6 DID ALITA HARM EARTHLINGS?

It is strongly hinted at in the film that Alita fought for the United Republic of Mars during “the Great War.” We see her fight plenty of cyborg opponents, but we never really see her go up against a straight-up, Earth-born human. If she and her war buddies did participate in the fight against Earth, wouldn’t she have gone up against them at some point?

The fact of the matter is we never see if Alita did or didn’t eliminate humans as part of her role in the war. We’re sure that some of her later human friends would not have been too pleased to know if she did attack humans with her Berserker body in the past.

5 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF MARS?

An infuriating omission from the movie’s plot is any information regarding the fate of the United Republic of Mars. The Terraforming Wars are described with great detail in the manga, but any mention of “the Great War” from the film is vague and obtuse.

We are left with no hint at what the fate of the United Republic of Mars could have been or at what point Alita got separated from their forces. Alita’s entire work relationship with the URM is left clouded by her lack of memory. Since this is a point that deviates greatly from the manga, we can only guess what happened to the people of Mars.

4 HOW DOES NOVA KNOW ALITA?

It is heavily implied in the film that the villain, Nova, knows who Alita is. He makes several remarks that hint at this knowledge, and he spends the entire movie planning to end her existence once he is made aware of it. Alita even seems to realize toward the end of the film that she knows him in return. But the movie ends before it is revealed how the two know each other.

The story closes with a final shot of Alita, about to win a match of Motorball, pointing at Zalem. She clearly intends to travel there and confront Nova, but we get no satisfaction from such a confrontation because the end credits start rolling immediately afterward.

3 DID ALITA EVER LIVE ON ZALEM?

Alita’s head and upper torso are found in the junkyard of Iron City. Dr. Ido, the kindly cyborg doctor with a clinic nearby, takes her in and gives her a new body. Later on, when speculation about Alita’s past is brought up, it is theorized by several characters that she used to live on the remote, floating city of Zalem.

The junkyard where she was found lies directly beneath Zalem. It is logical to assume that she was dumped there from the floating city. However, given what little we know about Zalem, Alita would not have been dumped so casually if anybody had known what she was.

2 HOW DID ALITA END UP IN THE TRASH?

Alita is no bit of spoiled food to be casually thrown in the trash. She is a relic of the United Republic of Mars, a piece of effective war machinery. Even in her damaged, defunct state, she should not have been tossed aside so lightly. And since Alita is a product of war, she would not have knowingly been sent away from Zalem in the first place, tossed down to the Iron City junkyard.

The question of why she was found there remains unanswered in the movie. Both the audience and Alita never find out why she was abandoned. It is a head-scratcher of a situation that will only be solved if a sequel gets released.

1 WHY DID NO ONE BOTHER TO STEAL ALITA’S HEART?

Alita’s heart is a special piece of equipment, not just because it is her heart but because it has immense potential as a source of energy. It is because of the power of her heart that Alita is able to accomplish extraordinary feats in battle. Even if her body was sent to be thrown out with junk, how could no one on Zalem recognize the value of keeping her heart?

The United Republic of Mars had a reputation for superb technological advancement. If Alita was brought down while on Zalem, her heart would have been a prize worthy of holding onto. We can only assume why her heart was left in her body.

When Henry Cavill was announced as Geralt in Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, fans had questions. Namely: why?

Okay, so Cavill isn’t the worst choice in the world. But he wasn’t one of the fancasts that people had poured over, desperate for Netflix to pick one of the top choices, the actors who already somewhat resembled Geralt. Even in the screen test they released to the public, Cavill is more Rhaegar Targaryen than Geralt of Rivia.

And yes—he’s supposed to look more elven in the books. But not quite that much. So here are the actors that were passed over for Geralt, or unavailable, but would have made fans rejoice instead of say, “um, what?”

8 MADS MIKKELSEN

Mads Mikkelsen was one of the top choices for Geralt. Around Geralt’s age, he probably could have been roughed up enough to look like the witcher. He wasn’t quite as bulky as game Geralt, but some make-up could have made him cut an intimidating presence, and he was a famous enough actor that he’d have drawn people to the series.

Some people weren’t convinced, pointing out that although Mikkelsen is a great actor, he’s not quite Geralt.

Fair and true—but he looks more like him than Cavill, so it would have been something. And he was one of the most mentioned before the casting announcement.

7 ANSON MOUNT

Hell On Wheels was a western television series that Anson Mount starred in. With his beard and his hair all greyed up, it’s pretty impossible to look at him in this show and not think he resembles Geralt.

Not being as famous as the likes of Mikkelsen, he was mentioned less in the fancasts, but every time someone pulled up a picture and said, “hey, don’t you think he’d make a great Geralt?” the response was a unified yes. He was filming something else at the same time though, so people were pretty sure it’d be impossible to get him for The Witcher. Seems they were right.

6 NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU

Another super famous name among the list of fancasts was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Recently starring in everything from romantic comedies to high fantasy, his most notable role is Jaime Lannister on Game Of Thrones—and since the final season is about to air, fans were hoping that might free him up for Geralt.

He’s tall, muscular, and old enough that he could definitely be greyed and scarred up to look like Geralt. Likely, no one would have been unhappy with this casting. He’s also proven himself to be a pretty diverse actor, so no doubt he would have done Geralt justice. Alas, we will never know for sure.

5 CLIVE STANDEN

Standen is most famously known for his role in Vikingsas Rollo, brother of Ragnar, but he’s done a few other things of note: most recently, the action television series version of Taken. Like Mount, he was one of the lesser mentioned names but every time he did pop up, people agreed he could make a good Geralt.

He does have more of the game-Geralt look than a book-Geralt look, which is reportedly not what the television series is going for, so that may certainly be contributing to why he wasn’t mentioned too much. Still, he’d have been a pretty solid choice if the make-up and costume department could have worked their magic on him.

4 TRAVIS FIMMEL

Another Vikings star suggested for the role was the star, Travis Fimmel. He has the same vibe as Standen, even though the brothers are rivals in Vikings—rough, muscular, and charismatic enough that he could have pulled off Geralt. He’s a little young and smooth-skinned though, but that’s what make-up and collodion are for; making someone into the character.

Hopefully, they’re going to put bucket loads of that stuff on Cavill.

Not everyone loved the idea of Fimmel as Geralt though, and the suggestion ended up with pretty mixed reactions, but it’s safe to say he would have at least had the possibility of doing a good job. He wasn’t an instant write-off.

3 TOM HARDY

Like Travis Fimmel, Tom Hardy looks a tiny bit young for Geralt, but he was another one who was suggested over and over. Must be the muscles and the beard. He wouldn’t quite have been an instant solid choice that every fan would have been happy with, but it’s unlikely he would have received the same “wtf” reaction that Cavill managed to.

At the very least, he would have gotten a chance. After all, he did manage to make his way onto multiple Geralt fancast lists before the Netflix show was even announced, like most of these men.

2 VIGGO MORTENSEN

Mortensen is older than most on this list, but as Geralt is grey-haired and battle-scarred, that doesn’t really matter. Mostly, people were picturing a blend of his Lord Of The Ringslook and his usual, everyday self. Mortensen has proven that he can do high fantasy better than almost anyone thanks to Aragorn, and we can only imagine that there would have been very few negative reactions to seeing him taken on Geralt.

He’s the perfect blend of handsome and rough already and although Geralt’s appearance actually isn’t described in much depth in the books, it’s assumed he has this blend too—after all, he’s seen and fought a lot, but he still manages to be popular with the women.

1 GERARD BUTLER

Finally, a questionable one, but one that was suggested many times too, so we can only assume he was another one that fans would have preferred to see as Geralt: Gerard Butler.

The Scottish actor popped up on lists also for his appearance, age, and let’s be real, the beard. He’s tall and broad, and probably could have made a pretty intimidating Geralt even without make-up and scars designed from collodion, so it’s a fair recommendation.

But there’s little point in wishful thinking about all these rough, older actors any more, because Henry Cavill ended up with the role. And who knows? Maybe he’ll be great. But the internet reactions seem pretty dubious.

Whether you’re discouraged about having yet another streaming service to subscribe to, or you’re looking forward to having all your favorite Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Animated features in one place, there’s one thing for sure; the House of Mouse is not messing around with putting out a ton of content for its new Disney Plus streaming service, and making that content exclusive.

Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, and Disney CEO Bob Iger have been opening up a lot in the past year about the future of Disney Plus, and specifically how it relates to the MCU. Expect to see fan-favorite characters like Loki, Falcon, Bucky Barnes, and even Lady Sif get their own series, while future Marvel Studios pictures go directly to the service. We couldn’t be more excited to see how the “long form” of televised storytelling adds to the richness the MCU has already created. Here’s what we know so far!C

11 CAPTAIN MARVEL WILL BE THE FIRST EXCLUSIVE MARVEL FILM AVAILABLE

Brie Larson has been declared the next “billion dollar” Marvel star, and her new film Captain Marvel is set to smash box office records when it hits theaters on March 8th. It doesn’t even need to make the 400 million dollars domestically that Wonder Woman did to be considered a great success; it has another ace up its sleeve.

Captain Marvel will be the first Marvel Studios film to exclusively premiere on Disney Plus, which means anyone that doesn’t want to subscribe to the service in 2019 will just have to hurry off to the theater to see it.

10 AVENGERS: ENDGAME WILL GO DIRECTLY TO DISNEY PLUS

After Captain Marvel debuts in March, Avengers: Endgame will hit theaters in late April, effectively concluding the incredible conflict between the Avengers and the Mad Titan Thanos that had been building to its climactic final showdown for years.

Avengers: Endgame will see the end of many of the story arcs for favorite Marvel characters while launching opportunities for stories including several new heroes. It will be the next Marvel Studios title to exclusively be distributed through Disney Plus, bypassing the big trio of streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime) completely.

9 LOKI GETS HIS OWN LIMITED SERIES

One of the most anticipated series being talked about in connection to Disney Plus is the as yet untitled Loki spin-off. It will star fan favorite Tom Hiddleston in the role of the prankster god of Asgard and half-brother to the God of Thunder and Avenger, Thor.

Given Loki’s fate at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, it’s unclear exactly when the series will take place, and it may end up being a prequel. What is known, is that it will be a limited series of 6-8 episodes and a chance for fans who thought Loki didn’t have enough screen time to watch him cause even more chaos.

8 SCARLET WITCH AND VISION GET THEIR OWN LIMITED SERIES

Along with the hype surrounding the Loki series, there’s been considerable interest in the Scarlet Witch and Vision series rumored to also be in development. Fans of both characters liked watching their connection grow in the Avengers movies, but felt that they didn’t get nearly enough screen time.

There’s no information on when the series will be set, or if it will feature familiar characters from their past (Magneto), but we do know that both Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany will return to reprise their roles. It will also be a mini-series, of 6-8 episodes.

7 THE WINTER SOLDIER AND FALCON GET THEIR OWN SHOW

Much praise has been heaped on Falcon and Bucky Barnes (the Winter Soldier) for being second-tier Marvel characters that managed to leave a big impression. It also helps that Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have a fun camaraderie both on and off the silver screen.

We have no release date, but we do know that it will be written by Malcolm Spellman, and consist of 6-8 episodes. Considering both Falcon and Bucky turned to dust at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, it’s unclear when it will take place, but based on interviews with both Stan and Mackie, they’re interested in it having a “buddy cop” vibe.

Aside from Kevin Feige producing the series, no writers have been named, and it’s unclear in what time period it will take place. If it takes place during Thor: Ragnarok, perhaps it will create an intriguing in-universe reason why Lady Sif wasn’t present, or what her fate was in Avengers: Infinity War.

5 IT WILL HAVE EVERY PREVIOUS MARVEL STUDIOS RELEASE AVAILABLE

It probably comes as no surprise, but Disney will be pulling its collective Marvel Studios releases from their homes on other streaming services to be offered exclusively on Disney Plus. While some properties like Star Wars live-action films may live on due to licensing agreements for the next few years, Marvel television shows and films will only be found on Disney Plus.

This accounts for why fan-favorite Marvel series like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and to a lesser extent Iron Fist were unceremoniously canceled on Netflix. The contract for their collective licenses ran out with Netflix, and it didn’t want to produce what Disney would solely profit from.

4 THERE PROBABLY WON’T BE A DEADPOOL SERIES

In one of the largest mergers in recent times, Disney acquired Twentieth Century Fox and with it, a lot of hot intellectual properties. Aliens, Predator, and the X-Men characters are now all fair game for Disney Plus to make into series, as well as one very special superhero: Deadpool.

While it’s entirely possible Disney will choose to launch a Deadpool series, they have to be careful with the material they work with. Bob Iger has been firm that there won’t be anything R-Rated on the streaming service, which basically takes all the fun out of anything Deadpool related.

3 THERE WILL BE A POSSIBLE X-MEN SERIES

Until recently, Marvel Studios had to tread lightly with the entire X-Men catalog, especially since it was owned by Twentieth Century Fox. Use of the word “mutant” wasn’t happening, so strategic nomenclature was put in place (Scarlet Witch isn’t a mutant, she’s an “Inhuman”).

Now that Disney has acquired Fox, however, things may change for the better. The X-Men may get to be involved with the main plots of the big Marvel Studio films, instead of appearing isolated from the monumental goings-on in the rest of the MCU like they have been.

2 DAREDEVIL, LUKE CAGE, AND IRON FIST PROBABLY WON’T RETURN

Fans were surprised when popular Marvel shows like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist were canceled abruptly and without any quantifiable reason. They then came to find out that Disney itself was giving up $300 million in annual licensing fees to house its IP’s on Netflix by moving them over to Disney Plus.

With that being said, don’t expect your favorite Marvel shows to come back right away; Bob Iger, Disney CEO has stated that the content for the streaming service will be very family friendly, and their more mature themes may not make the cut.

1 IT WILL FOCUS ON SECONDARY CHARACTERS

One of the biggest complaints from Marvel fans is that many of the characters they like in the MCU don’t get enough screen time, with their backstories often abbreviated or entirely written out in favor of propping up more important characters. These are characters that would never even be considered for their own stand-alone film, despite having large followings among fans of their comic books.

Disney+ has heard these complaints and plans to devote the majority of its Marvel films and television series produced exclusively for the service to these second-tier characters. It’s time for Iron Man and Captain America to play second fiddle for once.

The CW Network certainly knows their stuff when it comes to entertaining content: dramas, comedies, mysteries, teen favorites, they’ve got it all! Despite many of the shows going on hiatus during the winter months, we’re happy to share that your most loved CW shows are coming back, and pretty soon, too.

Whether you’ve been able to wait for them to pop up back on your screens or not, the time has come. Here are the top CW shows returning this 2019.

10 ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO

Roswell, New Mexico is CW’s newest 2019 addition and has instantly become a fan favorite. The show follows the main character, Liz Ortecho, played by actress Jeanine Mason, and her return back to her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico.

The show first aired last month and tells the tale of Liz discovering her teenage crush is really an alien who has kept his extraterrestrial abilities at bay. However, when there is a violent attack on Earth, things start to get very interesting. If you’re into sci-fi and mystery style television shows, then this is the perfect fit for you.

9 BLACK LIGHTNING

Black Lightningis yet another CW show that has become quite the television hot topic. The show first made its way to the CW back in 2018, and luckily for us, it was just renewed for a third season on January 31, 2019. The show follows a high school principal, Jefferson Pierce, and his past as a superhero named Black Lightning.

Although Pierce has since retired from fighting crime, he is forced to throw his suit back on when a local gang known as the 100, starts causing havoc throughout the city of Freeland. It goes without saying that this superhero show is definitely one to keep your eye on.

8 ARROW

CW’sArrow has been around since 2012 and has easily earned its spot on this list. The show has officially been renewed for an eighth season this past month and will continue to air its phenomenal episodes each week starting this spring. The show follows the main character Oliver Queen, who is a billionaire turn vigilante who finds himself in far too many predicaments.

The show not only features Green Arrow, but has seen several DC Comicscharacters throughout its time on television, and it’s expected that there are even more to come.

7 DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, or simply Legends of Tomorrow is a spin-off CW show features characters introduced from other shows including Arrow and The Flash. The series itself is based on DC Comics and was officially renewed for a fifth season last month.

The popular show, which is set in the Arrowverse, illustrates the lives of characters Firestorm, Atom, Rip Hunter and so many more. Viewers can expect the show to return this upcoming spring, and considering the action and excitement the show has provided in past season, fans can expect even more to come.

6 RIVERDALE

Riverdale is probably one of the most popular shows amongst teenagers right now. Not only does the show appear on the CW network, but it is also available on Netflix. The show is based on the famous Archie Comics, with a very dramatic and cinematic twist to it.

Viewers can tune in to watch Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead take on the unfortunate events that seem to continuously find their way to the town of Riverdale. Not only does the storyline keep you invested, but the diverse and relatable cast keep audience members engaged, making their renewal for a fourth season coming this spring, totally understandable.

5 IN THE DARK

In The Dark is the CW’s newest addition. Despite it not having even made its way to television just yet, it is one of the CW’s most highly anticipated shows of 2019. Set to his television screens across North America on April 4, 2019, In The Dark follows the life of a 20-year-old blind woman who finds the corpse of her best friend.

The series follows the main character, Murphy, in her quest to find out just what happened to her friend, Tyson. Although she may be blind, Murphy is not letting that stop her from seeking revenge on her friend’s death. Definitely set your PVRs for this one, because it’s bound to be a whirlwind drama series.

4 THE 100

The 100 has easily become one of the most watched and loved shows on The CW. If you are into post-apocalyptic fiction, then this is the show for you. The 100 follows a group of people who land on Earth from a space habitat known as “the Ark” after a nuclear apocalypse takes out the entire planet.

The series is based on the novel The 100, with added in twists and turns that keep audience members wanting more. Luckily for fans of the show, the CW smash hit will be returning for its sixth season on April 30, 2018, so you better mark your calendars.

3 IZOMBIE

iZombie will scratch any zombie itch you may have. This CW show follows the life of main character and medical school resident, Olivia Moore, who is turned into a zombie on a boat party one night. The series follows her incessant cravings, that leads her to abandon her career, family, and friends, and take on a position at the morgue where she feeds on the brains of those she autopsies.

Her secret doesn’t last long, and it just so happens that those she feeds on become a part of who she is. If that doesn’t sound compelling enough, we aren’t sure what will. iZombie has become a CW sensation and has just been renewed for their fifth and final season airing May 2, 2019.

2 SUPERNATURAL

Supernatural is probably one of the longest running shows on the CW. If the title doesn’t already give it away, the show follows supernatural phenomenons witnessed by demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester and the countless adventures they go on.

From demons, ghosts, monsters, to other supernatural beings, there is certainly never a dull moment in the Winchesters’ lives, making for quite the roller coaster ride of a show. Supernatural is currently in their fourteenth season, and on January 30, 2019, the CW announced that the show would be renewed for a fifteenth.

1 JANE THE VIRGIN

Jane The Virgin, stars lead actress Gina Rodriguez who plays Jane Villanueva. The premise of the show is quite simple, Jane is a virgin, yet becomes pregnant. Despite the straight forward storyline, Jane The Virgin has become the CW’s most loved show with ratings you wouldn’t believe.

The series, which is currently in its fourth season, follows the life of Jane and her son and the constant ups and downs the two go through. Viewers can expect to be taken on a trip of emotions when watching the show, which is what makes it such a phenomenal television program. With that being said, fans can expect the fifth and unfortunately final season to air on March 27, 2019.

The general consensus about Affleck in the role was that he was a pretty good Batman in some pretty bad Batman films. As a result, Affleck leaves us with some memories, both good and bad, of his time as the Caped Crusader. Check out Batfleck’s best and worst moments!

10 BEST: WITNESSING SUPERMAN

For all its faults, Batman V Superman started the movie off in a brilliant way. The film opens with the battle between Superman and Zod at the end of Man of Steel. But this time we see it from Bruce Wayne’s point-of-view on the ground. The destruction is frightening and immediately makes you understand why the world would be afraid of these aliens.

The sequence also helps establish Affleck’s Bruce Wayne as fearless and heroic. As Metropolis falls around him and its citizens flee, he charges directly into the destruction. It’s the kind of moment that gives you goosebumps.

9 WORST: HIS ORIGIN

Some origin stories don’t need to be retold. Everyone knows Bruce Wayne’s tragic past, but we got to see it yet again in Batman V Superman. However, one small change to the well-worn tale changed things for the worse.

We see the mugger approach Bruce and his parents with a gun. Then, we see Thomas Wayne take a swing at the gunman, which gets him and his wife killed. It’s a small moment but helps encapsulate what’s wrong with this take on Batman. It suggests that violence and being a hero are the same thing, which is why Affleck’s Batman was sometimes hard to cheer for.

8 BEST: PEP TALK

Affleck had a tall order to fill when it came to the Justice League. He needed to convincingly show why a man dressed as a bat should be the leader of these god-like beings as they attempt to save the world. One scene between him and Flash achieves this.

As they prepare to do battle with Steppenwolf, Flash voices his concerns about whether he really belongs in this group of heroes. Batman’s response is simple: save one person, then you’ll know if you’re a hero. Short as it is, it’s one of those great inspirational speeches that gets your heart pumping.

7 WORST: MURDER

Snyder seems to have some fascination with pushing his heroes to their deadliest potential. The death of Zod in Man of Steel is still a controversial moment. And he certainly didn’t let up at all when it came to Batman in Batman V Superman.

Quite unlike the strict code that Christian Bale’s Batman lived by, Affleck’s Batman has no problem killing bad guys. We see him shoot, bludgeon and burn baddies without batting an eye. Sure, this is a more cynical Batman, but the cold-blooded nature leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

6 BEST: RELATIONSHIP WITH ALFRED

The one relationship that Batman has always had is with his trustee right-hand man, Alfred. While it is not a huge part of the Affleck films, the interplay between him and Jeremy Irons as Alfred is a highlight of each of the films.

We get the sense that these two men have been doing this together for a long time and both might be getting a little tired. They aren’t afraid to voice differences with each other. And the banter between them offers some much-needed comedic relief. It’s a shame we won’t see more of these two together.

5 WORST: WONDER WOMAN ROMANCE

Wonder Woman and Batman have a long history in the comics. Affleck had good chemistry with Gal Gadot in the role, making them a good team. However, the filmmakers seemed to want to take that chemistry to a very obvious and dull place.

In the midst of trying to save the world, the film unwisely took some time to plant the seeds for a romance between Wonder Woman and Batman. It’s hard to say if this was Snyder or Joss Whedon, but it’s a bad move to saddle the only female on the team with a boring romance. Luckily that won’t be going anywhere now.

4 BEST: SUPERMAN FIGHT

Affleck’s introduction as Batman came along with a lot of expectations as he would face-off with Superman for the first time on the big screen. The film took some strange paths to get to that final battle, and while the motivations behind it made little sense, the fight delivered.

3 WORST: SUICIDE SQUAD POST CREDITS

Seeing Affleck’s Batman show up in Suicide Squad as a figure lurking in the shadows of Gotham was cool. But when Bruce Wayne shows up in the film’s post-credit scene, things quickly went downhill.

The scene finds Bruce meeting with Amanda Waller, the mastermind behind the Suicide Squad. She provides him with information on metahumans in exchange for protection for the chaos she caused. Aside from being a pretty lame set-up for Justice League, it was one more example of how this Batman isn’t a great hero. He’s agreeing to protect a woman responsible for the death of countless people. Not a great look.

2 BEST: WAREHOUSE FIGHT

The cinematic Batmen have varied in quality, but Affleck is undoubtedly this most frightening of them all. Fear is a big part in what makes Batman work and Affleck showed us why criminals would be scared to get caught by this guy. Mainly because he can kick a lot of butt.

The warehouse fight sequence in Batman V Superman is the film’s highlight, even surpassing his fight with Superman. We have never seen Batman fight like this. He expertly and entertainingly takes out a whole room of thugs with little more than his fists. We’d like to see Clooney to that!

1 WORST: MARTHA

Though it isn’t Affleck’s fault, his Batman is part of one of the most embarrassing moments in Batman’s long history. If the set-up to his fight with Superman was clunky, the reason the fight stops is just laughable. As it turns out, their mothers share the same first name, so now they’re best friends.

This is the moment that Batman V Superman will be remembered for and that’s not good. The anticlimax leads to an unintentionally funny moment. You just know that this was a reveal the filmmakers were so excited about and sadly it just falls flat.

There are no games quite like Minecraft. Initially released back in May of 2009, Minecraft has swiftly grown into a worldwide phenomenon that still manages to grip fans old and young to this day. The game is made up of random, procedurally generated worlds that players can create and interact with; every world is made up of blocks, and each block can be changed, harvested or even destroyed (TNT is one particularly amusing way to accomplish this).

Players pay a one time fee in order to own a copy of the game, and as time goes on, the team behind Minecraft is constantly releasing more exciting additions to keep fans searching and fighting and building on. Some of these add-ons include whole new biomes, like oceans or jungles, exciting new mobs like turtles or dolphins, or cats and parrots to befriend and follow you along; there are even new weapons, armors and color blocks for building up a world that truly reflects your individual personality.

Some of the items in Minecraft – whether they have been around since the days of Alpha testing or added later on as a teaser for fans – are just plain difficult to find. Hidden, even. Maybe they are mob drops from creatures that hardly show up, or they’re the kind of thing that you have to be ‘in the know’ for to even come across. Maybe you have to make them yourself, but the ingredients are near impossible to collect.

Whatever the case, here are 20 Hidden Things Only Real Fans Know How To Find, focussing mostly on Survival mode.

20 EMERALD ORE

When Minecraft first began, there were only a few different ores for players to mine and collect. Coal was, and still is, considered the most widespread and common to find. On the opposite end, diamond ore was once thought of as the rarest; it was almost a status symbol to have some diamonds in your world’s inventory. However, nowadays the emerald ore is the rarest of them all. It is found very rarely in caves and only drops a single emerald when mined. You would have to spend a very long time in Minecraft to actually come across even one of these, let alone enough to build up a solid collection of emeralds for trade.

19 TOTEM OF UNDYING

The Totem of Undying is a mystical item that can only be found by seeking out one of the incredibly rare Woodland Mansions that pops up randomly within a world. Venture inside, and you will undoubtedly come across the Evoker, a grey-skinned illager (that is, evil villager type). He is a powerful sorcerer who will attack you with many spells. If you can defeat the Evoker, he will drop the Totem of Undying.

If something ends you while you have it equipped in your off-hand slot, you will pop right back to life. This makes the item highly sought-after, even for all the hoops you have to jump to find one.ADVERTISING

18 NAME TAGS

If you’re new to the game or have just started up a world, it’s unlikely that your priorities will be geared much towards naming the many items you have accumulated. However, for more experienced players and longer-running worlds, it can be fun to give a name to your things. What about calling that diamond sword ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ and slaying a sheep? You’ll get a funny little message in the chat that makes it all worthwhile.

The problem is, name tags cannot simply be crafted. If you want one, you’ll have to start dungeon-crawling. It could be many hours of gameplay before you finally find a chest with those elusive name tags in it.

17 PINK WOOL (FROM A PINK SHEEP)

One of the great things about this game is how in-depth you can get with customization, making buildings and structures of any shape and color. You could make the world’s most detailed rainbow if you really wanted to.

Part of that is accomplished by gathering a bunch of different dyed wools. You can get dyes from random items and apply them to wool blocks, or even straight to one of the sheep you own. But, coming across a wild sheep that naturally has a crazy color like yellow, blue, or especially pink, is very rare. Usually, that takes one red and one white sheep coming together to make it happen. So, traveling long enough to find and shear a natural pink sheep is quite the achievement.A

16 BLAZE RODS

Blaze rods are an item essential for the complicated art of potion-brewing. In fact, you can’t even make a potion stand without one, making them a valuable commodity. However, they are only acquired by destroying a creature called a Blaze, and Blazes cannot be found in the overworld (that is, the main world you spawn in). Instead, you must harvest enough obsidian (which, in itself, requires a diamond pickaxe to achieve) to build a Nether portal and enter that Nether World. Once there, if you can bring down a Blaze, you can have as many of these rods as you like. Unfortunately, newbies are unlikely to get to this point for quite a while into their game.

15 SLIME BALLS

Slime balls are one of those items that aren’t strictly necessary in day-to-day gameplay, but one that opens up a whole new world of possibilities if acquired. To get slime balls, you have to venture far and wide to find a swamp biome (or, rarely, they will spawn underground) where bouncy, cuboid creatures called Slimes may appear. Attack a Slime, and they will break into smaller versions of themselves, making it easy to get overrun if you’re not prepared.

Finally slaying a Slime will net you some slime balls, which can be used to make sticky pistons; these pistons are part of advanced mechanisms made by players to control their world, so these slime balls are always sought after.A

14 SADDLE

Sure, it’s fun enough to run around your Minecraft world, using up energy to traverse those long distances. It can even be exciting to hop in a boat and journey across the vast oceans. But, few things beat coming across a ride-able mob, such as a horse, or – much sillier – a pig, slapping a saddle on their back, and hitting the road with your new pal.

Saddles are another item that cannot simply be crafted, though, so you will have to seek one out. The problem is, saddles are only found in a small percentage of chests within strongholds, villages, Nether fortresses, temples and End cities. Though the possible places to acquire one are widespread, the actual odds are very low.

13 COMMAND BLOCKS

Unlike most of the other entries on this list, command blocks are not actual items that can be regularly found during gameplay. Instead, the only way to get your hands on one is by entering various commands into the console, such as /give @s minecraft:command_block. These special blocks are predominantly used by Minecraft multiplayer servers, although they can also be useful to more experienced single players.

When powered by Redstone, command blocks unlock powerful cheats that can make – or literally break – the game. There are even three types of command blocks to choose from: an impulse command block, a chain block, and a repeating block. With so much to choose from and so much power, make sure that you use them with caution!

12 ENDER PEARLS

Playing a bit on the idea of ‘Slenderman’, the Endermen are spooky, infrequently-spawning mobs that slither in the night, steal blocks, and stare into your soul. Unlike skeletons, creepers, and zombies, Endermen don’t pop up all the time. If you do manage to come across one, they can be very tricky, as they poof in and out, teleporting around you. Wearing a pumpkin on your head stops them from getting hostile before you can attack, and once it has been slain, you can harvest a couple of ender pearls, which let you teleport long distances.

It takes some dedication to seek out Endermen and go through the trouble to harvest these pearls, but if you can, it will make your travels a lot more fun.

11 MONSTER SPAWNER

Who wouldn’t love to have a room where you can spawn endless amounts of skeletons, zombies, or more? Well, all right, maybe that sounds a bit odd, but think about it. If you had one of these rooms, you could farm hostile mobs for all of their useful drops! But how would this come about? You’ll need to find a monster spawner.

These cage-looking blocks can be found very occasionally after a while of mining. These dungeon rooms are often pitch black and deadly to drop into, but if you can get to the spawner and cover it with torches, you can neutralize it and make it your own. Unfortunately, these cannot be picked up, only destroyed, so any monster-farming rooms that you make in Survival Mode will have to stay where you found them.ADVERTISING

10 NOTCH APPLE

Golden apples are a food item that can be crafted with relative ease by adding gold ingots to a regular apple at a crafting table. These apples provide health regeneration and absorption buffs, even when the health bar is already full. If that’s not enough for you, it may be time to seek out the much more elusive enchanted golden apple, otherwise known as a Notch apple.

The only way to get an enchanted apple is to find them in chests like saddles, though this is incredibly rare. You used to be able to craft them by using gold blocks, but this is not the case anymore. If you can find one, you’ll have in your hands one of the most powerful food items in all of the game.

9 MELON SEEDS

There are so many delicious and colorful foods to find and grow in Minecraft. From jaffa cakes to baked potatoes and mushroom soup, there are many ways to restore your health after an intense raid or a zombie horde attacking your base. One of the seemingly more simple items is the melon; like pumpkins, it is a block item that you can grow yourself, except when you harvest a melon, you get multiple slices to eat.

Melon seeds only appear in 18.5% of dungeon chests, and some chest mine carts and wooden mansions. Luckily, once you some seeds, you can grow infinitely more, but finding them in the first place isn’t easy.

8 MOB HEAD

If you want to get yourself one of these odd little trophies, you’ll have to look towards the many hostile mobs in the game. The easiest to get your blocky hands on is the Wither Skeleton head. Providing you can find enough Wither Skeletons to go after, you’ve got a 2.5% chance of receiving one as a drop – if it’s slain by a wild or tamed wolf. What, you didn’t think this would be easy, did you?

For zombie, creeper, dragon or skeleton heads, the only way to get them is if the mobs perish due to a charged creeper’s explosion – and the only way to get a charged creeper is for one to be struck by lightning! It’s a lot to go through, but wearing those heads around does look pretty cool.

7 BEACON BLOCK

Beacons are a unique item that goes on top of a pyramid made of either iron, gold, or diamond blocks. When this is crafted, the beacon is activated and can provide buffs to any players in the vicinity. Even more, you can change the color of the beam emitted by the beacon just by placing some colored glass over the top of it. You can even mix the colors!

A beacon block can be mined (if you’re somehow lucky enough to find one in Survival) or crafted by putting together glass blocks, obsidian, and a nether star. The rarity of the obsidian and nether star make this a difficult thing to obtain, and even harder to set up at full capacity. Best of luck!

6 NATURALLY-GENERATED PACKED ICE

Ice is one of those rare Minecraft blocks that can be generated (by placing water in cold biomes) but you can’t actually harvest it in survival mode. Regardless, it’s still pretty easy to make. On the opposite end, we have packed ice. If you want to get your hands on some packed ice, the most difficult way to do so is by navigating your way to the rare Ice Spike biome. There, you can harvest some using a pickaxe that has been enchanted with Silk Touch.

If you don’t want to find some packed ice in the wild, you can try harvesting regular ice with your enchanted pickaxe and crafting it in the table – but the adventure of trying to find the Ice Spike biome is there for any truly dedicated fans.

5 MUSIC DISCS

There are few things better than wandering through the game’s wilderness, putting your favorite tunes on blast and just completely losing yourself to the setting. One way to get even more immersed in this blocky world, however, is to try collecting all the music discs that can be found randomly throughout. Created by the artist C418, each disc has a special colour and name – such as Cat, Wait, Far, etc.

There are twelve unique discs (which can be played in a jukebox) that players can discover in various chests. Of course, to collect them all in Survival Mode, it will take a lot of time and dedication, leaving this venture to only the most hardcore of fans.

4 HORSE ARMOR

So, you’ve got yourself a new horse pal to ride around the vast, lonely world – but wait, now you want to take your equine friend into battle against undead hordes or Ender dragons? Well, it’s only fair to equip your noble steed with a suitable set of horse armor.

The caveat here is that horse armor cannot be crafted like player armor. But don’t give up! Like many other rare items, horse armour has a chance of popping up in various chests in wild structures such as dungeons, villages, strongholds, or temples. Keep a keen eye out – especially for that most elusive diamond set, which grants your steed a whopping eleven points of defense.

3 JEB SHEEP AND DINNERBONE

Minecraft is not a game known for being chock-full of easter eggs, inside jokes or hidden secrets, but there certainly are a few to be discovered. One of the funniest and most random of these is the Jeb sheep or Dinnerbone. The Jeb sheep, named after one of the game’s designers, occurs when a player gets a name tag (either in Survival or Creative mode) and changes it in an anvil to be called “jeb_,” then applies it to a sheep. That sheep’s wool will then cycle through all the colours of the rainbow in a magical display!

Getting another name tag and calling it “Dinnerbone” or “Grumm,” then applying it to any animal will make that animal flip upside down and live out the rest of its existence staring up at the sky.

2 SEA LANTERN

A relatively recent addition to the game, sea lanterns are another glowing block that you can use to light up the world around you. These subtle, pale cubes emit a nice white light, perfect for chilled-out bases and castles.

To find yourself a sea lantern, you’ll have to get good at holding your breath! These unique blocks only generate in the rare ocean monuments and ocean ruins, acting as their light source so you can see where you’re going as you mine. If you’ve spent enough time in the game to find some of these lanterns, grab as many as you can while you’ve got the chance.

1 DRAGON EGG

Perhaps the one truly unique item to be found in any Minecraft world, the dragon egg is a trophy item and the absolute rarest thing in all of the game. If you play any single player world long enough to make it to the End – another realm, like the Nether – you will be faced with a dangerous battle against the mighty Ender dragon, the ultimate boss.

When the Ender Dragon is defeated, a dragon egg will appear on the exit portal. Unfortunately, the egg is not normally something that can be mined, as doing so will cause it to teleport. But there is good news – if there are no air blocks for it to teleport into, the egg can be mined, and you will have yourself the ultimate hidden item in Minecraft.

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Are there any hidden or rare items that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

The exponential growth for the Minecraft Marketplace is due to a number of factors. The Minecraft Team is releasing more free promotional content. This includes items such as the Catastrophic Pandamonium world, which Marketplace creator GameMode One built in partnership with Microsoft.

In addition to the free content, the Minecraft Marketplace is benefiting from timing and improved features. December is one of the biggest times of the year for live-service games. People who get new smartphones, consoles, or PCs for the gift-giving holidays return to something like Minecraft or to try it for the first time. And with better search and promotional features, The Minecraft Team has turned its Marketplace into a major attraction.

Let’s get to the charts.

Top 10 most downloaded

Catastrophic Pandamonium by Gamemode One: “Welcome to the Minecraft Preserve, a sanctuary for the mobs of Minecraft. Your dream job is about to become a nightmare when you realize the pandas are missing!”

Winter Gifts Bundle by Minecraft: “Whether you were naughty or nice this year (hopefully nice!), this bundle is our holiday gift to you! Last winter, we gave away amazing skins, worlds and adventures from some of your favorite Marketplace community creators. And now you can download them all again in this bundle of Winter Wonders!”

Minecraft Texture Update Beta by Minecraft: “The extraordinary Minecraft Texture Update has been on the Java Edition in beta for quite a while, and now it’s finally on Bedrock! We’re renovating the old textures of Minecraft and polishing them up for a new beginning. Don’t panic! This won’t completely overhaul the look of Minecraft — these new textures just give it a much-needed update!

Inspiration Island by Minecraft: “Visit Inspiration Island, a floating theme park world filled with creative challenges. Whether you are new to Creative Mode or just need a little extra inspiration, a visit here sets you on the path to craft your own groundbreaking worlds.”

Purple Parrot Party Place by Minecraft: “A celebration of all things purple parrot party and palace! Master the mechanics of fireworks, armor stands, jukeboxes, and banners. Traverse a jungle island to find a massive parrot temple.”

Legacy Skin Pack by Minecraft: “Get cracking with these starter skins and old favorites brought over from Minecraft editions of yore.”

Grid Runners by Noxcrew: “Take on Noxcrew’s Grid Runners: a mini-game map made up of classic Minecraft challenges where you can craft, mine and jump your way to victory. Compete against the clock for the fastest times and team up with all of your friends to find out who is the ultimate Minecraft champion! This is a free map, created exclusively for Minecon Earth 2018.”

ABSTRACTION: Minecon Earth by Jigarbov Productions: “Featuring the logos that were just begging to be played on, MINECON EARTH has floating landmasses with a surprising amount of hidden secrets and challenges.”

Luxury Life by PixelHeads: “Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

Aquatic Life by Cyclone Designs: “Get ready for a realistic aquarium experience with Aquatic Life! Dive into large tanks and swim with whale sharks! Discover dangerous shark species and hop on a boat and feed the Piranhas!”

Top 10 highest grossing

Luxury Life by PixelHeads: “Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

The Nightmare Before Christmas by Minecraft: “A nightmare? Before Christmas? Enjoy this themed pack by Minecraft.”

City Mash-Up by Everbloom Studios: “With over 1,000 hand-detailed rooms, there are stories, secrets, and mini-games around every corner. Build with the city’s full texture pack in your own worlds or take on any role you can imagine!”

Aquatic Life by Cyclone Designs: “Get ready for a realistic aquarium experience with Aquatic Life! Dive into large tanks and swim with whale sharks! Discover dangerous shark species and hop on a boat and feed the Piranhas!”

CampCraft by Blockworks: “A vast wilderness awaits you and your friends in CampCraft. Discover forest animals, ride camper vans, toast marshmallows, sit around the campfire and set up your own camp!”

City Life by PixelHeads: “Cruise through the big city in City Life! Chase down a bandit in your police car, save the day as a firefighter or take your dog for a walk.”

Spooky Pizza Place by InPvP: “Do you dare to enter? Try to survive all of the waves with five custom monsters. Includes pizzeria and surrounding buildings.”

Immersion: Chicago by Shapescape: “Immerse yourself in Chicago, the windy city. Visit the river with your friends, race through the streets and roleplay your daily life.”

Millionaire Mansions by Noxcrew: “Explore a town filled with beautiful mansions, sports cars, and a new toolset to help you design your dream house. Noxcrew’s Creative Toolbox is perfect for roleplay or building with your friends.”

If you just look at hardware, software, accessories, and game cards, the industry was up 13 percent to $16.7 billion.

“This is the highest annual tracked consumer spend total since the $17.4 billion generated in 2011,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “Annual dollar sales of tracked console, portable, and PC video game software reached $7.1 billion in 2018, growing 7 percent when compared to 2017. This is the highest annual total for tracked video game software spending since the $7.5 billion generated in 2012.”

We’ll check out the best-selling games of the year, but hardware was also up over the last 12 months.

State Farm announced today that it has entered a sponsorship agreement with Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, one of the most popular Fortnite streamers in the world.

DrLupo often plays with Richard Tyler Blevins, the Fortnite player better known as Ninja, who is the most popular streamer in the world with over 13 million followers on Twitch. DrLupo has just shy of 3 million subscribers. He is also captain of esports group Rogue’s Fortnite team. DrLupo raised $1.3 million for St. Jude’s Research Hospital in 2018, and he was nominated for a Game Awardlast year for Content Creator of the Year, a category that Ninja won.

This is the insurance company’s first sponsorship of an esports star, although State Farm has been evolved with esports before. It has sponsored the League of Legends Championship Series, NBA 2K League, and the Rocket League Championship Series.

As part of the deal, DrLupo’s stream will include State Farm branded replays, giveaways, and “in-stream stunts and product integration” (aka product placement).

Fortnite has become one of the most popular games in the world. The battle royale shooter is a massive hit on PC, mobile, and consoles. A large part of its success comes from its community of successful and popular streamers, including DrLupo.